History of Midkemia Press
Midkemia Press was started by a group
of friends in 1977 in San Diego. Steve Abrams was an enthusiastic
wargamer and was regularly attending the Triton Wargaming Club
at the University of California at San Diego (where he was a graduate
student). There he met Jon Everson and Conan Lamot (yes Conan
is his real name). As well as being wargamers, Conan one day (in
1975) returned from a trip to Los Angeles and returned with this
'neat new game' - Dungeons and Dragons, the original 3 book, boxed
set put out by a new company called Tactical Studies Review (TSR).
Conan had copied a number of relevant tables out of the books
and produced a mini players guide which he had titled - The Tome
of Midkemia. Being frustrated actors at heart, we took to this
new game concept like ducks to water. But there was a fly in the
sugar -- it became obvious that because of the outline nature
of the original game rules, the direction the local games were
taking was oriented heavily to bash and crash and building giant
characters (that only could be threatened by fighting their own
dopplegangers -- don't laugh, it really happened). This didn't
appeal particularly to a group of us, so we split off from the
main-stream D&D crowd and began writing our own rules set
based on our knowledge of medieval history, fantasy literature,
and our experiences recreating medieval fighting in the Society
for Creative Anachronism.
During a particularly extended mult-night, miniatures oriented
scenario (i.e. The Battle of Here), we were introduced to a friend
of a friend, named Raymond Feist, at that time a 'poor starving
student' at UCSD like the rest of us. Having trudged down the
path of building all these rules up into a playable game, Jon
Everson and Steve Abrams decided that they might as well start
a company and produce gaming products for the burgeoning Fantasy
Role Playing (FRP) market. Thinking the name was really trick,
they checked with Conan, who originally coined the name and got
permission from him to use the name Midkemia for 'all future time'.
Midkemia Press was born (formally still known as Abrams &
Everson) and produced their first (and arguably their best) product
, the book CITIES, in 1979. This book was usable with any FRP
game system and provided tables for generating encounters when
running games in city environments and a set of rules for running
'character catch-up' - sort of a solo adventure that your character
had while waiting for the next game. Typed completely on a rented
IBM selectric typewriter, with artwork done by friends Mary Coman,
Richard Spahl, Ray Feist (yes Ray even thought he could draw...)
and April Abrams (Apperson), the product was a real success for
what at that time was still pretty much a cottage industry. It
became obvious that April and Anita Everson were really part of
the company and Ray was brought in as a partner.
The second product was Midkemia's first fully populated role-playing
city, The City of Carse. Based on a revised map of medieval Carnarevon
in Wales (it's amazing how many people told us "a 'real'
city would never look like that!"). Here was the first look
at the whimsical capabilities of Ray. Steve and April had blocked
out the city in terms of who was where and left Ray typing over
the weekend on our new, powerful, Apple II (not II+, not IIe -
the original Apple II), SuperText word processor, and a case of
beer. For a real peek into those early days, I recommend reading
the sections on the 'Bazaar' in Carse.
This was followed over the next years by: The City of Jonril;
Tulan of the Isles; Towns of the Outlands; The Black Tower; The
Heart of the Sunken Lands, (for Chaosium) Thieves World, (an abortive
city project for Simulations Publications Inc. [SPI] Dragonquest
game) and (for Sorcerer's Apprentice magazine) The Village of
Hoxely. During this time, Ray became a world famous author, writing
novels of Midkemia's history and formally parted company with
Midkemia Press to clarify the respective ownership rights regarding
the game materials and novels. Midkemia products have been licensed
and printed in German and have until recently been in print through
Chaosium Inc. The CITIES product, in particular, has been most
recently in print as Avalon Hill's RuneQuest Cities.
Today, Midkemia Press, is principally
a license holder to Midkemia game products, which we share with
Ray Feist. The future looks to be oriented toward computer and
on-line gaming products. The first computer game set in Midkemia,
was Betrayal at Krondor, by Dynamix, Inc. The second computer
game had a difficult birthing, first being handled by 7th Level,
then Pyrotechnics and finally back to Sierra (Dynamix). Return
to Krondor, while not the ground-breaking game that Betrayl was
has enjoyed moderate success and spawned several new books by
Ray Feist.
Discussions continue off and on with various
publishers regarding the publishing of the entire game system
for the Tome of Midkemia, including the original modules and all
new modules. At this time there is no date set. Additionally,
Midkemia Press is working on play-by-email games based in the
Midkemian universe. Look for more information on this web site
as that project nears completion.
Steve Abrams